kermes oak, the air heady and aromatic with juniper and wild thyme. They rode on until mid-afternoon over the parched tableland. Storm clouds began to mass again to the south, but still the storm did not break. The air was hot and oppressive, even in these mountains. Then they began a slow descent, when the track entered a dense pine forest.
Everything was dark and claustrophobic, and the heavy, thundery atmosphere that had haunted them on the day they left Rome had returned. Surely a storm must break now. And in the darkness of the forest, the weight and silence of the brooding summer air felt more ominous still. Some of the horses grew skittish and rolled their eyes to left and right of the narrow track. They showed their frightened whites, and their ears flicked furiously, their nostrils flaring for danger, for they could see nothing among the dense, dark trees that crowded in like malevolent sentries on either side of the track.
Lucius noticed Marco gazing intently into the forest to their left as they rode. He followed the direction of his gaze. ‘What is it, Centurion?’
Marco shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
They said no more.
Count Heraclian, riding with his Palatine Guard at the head of the column again, found himself thinking of Varus and his legions in the dark Teutoburg Forest, even though they were still in the heart of Italy. There was no safety left in Italy. He found himself thinking, too, of Stilicho. Sometimes, he longed for the company and the steely optimism of that man, that murdered hero of Rome, whom he had always resented and whose killing he had commanded and condoned. Worst of all, he knew himself to be a weak man. He knew also that it was the most dreadful thing for any man to feel. To be a galley-slave, to be crucified, to be the ‘entertainment’ in a show of wild beasts – these things were as nothing to the torment of waking each morning and knowing yourself to have a weak and timorous spirit, beneath your shell of resplendent bronze and scarlet. Heraclian tightened his hold on the reins and rode on.
The dark pine trees almost met over their heads, and what slender sky they could see between them was as heavy and grey as a shield. It was getting so dark that they could hardly pick out the track before them, when suddenly everything was illuminated in a stab of forked lightning which struck the forest perilously close to the track. A clap of thunder followed only a fraction of a second after, showing how closely the lightning had missed the column itself. The horses whinnied and reared, and their riders reined them in with savage cries.
In the creaking Liburnian carriage, its ornate gilding and its swathes of crimson curtains seeming ever more ridiculous in this harsh and ominous landscape, Olympian actually reached out and snatched Attila’s arm for comfort, giving a gasp of fright as the bolt of lightning detonated close by in the forest. The boy carefully detached himself.
‘But we should be safe enough under the tall trees,’ stammered Olympian.
He sounded as if he was complaining about the lightning, about the way things were, petulantly, to the gods who made the storm. The mark of deepest foolishness. Attila smiled to himself.
Olympian could not understand the Hun boy. He smiled often – that wolfish grin – and yet there was no happiness in it. He was full of anger, even hatred. He smiled like a little god overseeing the sacrifice.
Count Heraclian signalled that the column should ride on, and they did so grimly. Experienced soldiers like Marco and Lucius lowered their spears, and took off their iron helmets, even if it did mean getting a soaking. But pity the standard-bearer in a storm. No lowering that for safety’s sake. Poor bugger was a human lightning- rod.
A chill wind had arisen, tossing the branches of the trees about above their heads, and whipping their cloaks round them. And then it began to rain, great gobbets of water smacking down on their heads and shoulders and drumming on the roofs of the carriages housing the lucky few. After the initial noisy cloudburst, the raindrops grew finer, and gusted down in an unbroken sheet, and the soldiers at the front of the column could barely see their way forward though the veils of water. In their carriage towards the back, Genseric and Beric finally woke up. Olympian crossed himself furiously, and throughout the column soldiers and officers variously crossed themselves in the name of Christ, or made promises of future sacrifices to Mithras or Jupiter, should they reach Ravenna safely. Not a few of them made vows and promises to all three gods. No point not spreading your bets, when the stake is always the same.
The rain pelted down and slicked their hair to their heads, and plastered their red woollen cloaks to their shoulders, and the horses’ manes clung to their withers and streamed with chill mountain rain. Puddles formed quickly on the dry summer track, at first as hard and unyielding as concrete, and then turning to yellowish, unctuous mud. Men and horses alike bowed their heads in obedience and fear and exhaustion to the superior force of the storm and the gods of the storm, and they rode on.
But Attila leant out of his carriage window and grinned into the rain.
‘Back inside, boy,’ scolded Olympian. ‘Draw the curtains.’
The boy ignored him.
Every other man in that column felt that the storm was around and about him like a raging animal, threatening to extinguish him with a single toss of its whitelight horns. But Attila knew that the storm ran through him, and that he was a part of it, and it could do him no harm. Every other man, huddled in his own private universe, felt smaller in the face of the storm: less powerful, threatened, diminished. But the boy felt stronger, greater, more powerful: one with the thunder, one with the universe. And looking at him, and seeing something of this truth in him, something unnatural, Olympian closed his eyes and crossed himself again.
Attila grinned out into the rain and into the black rain-drenched forest that closed in around them. When another terrific bolt of lightning hit the pines nearby, and sent one crashing to the ground in a cloudburst of sparks and smoke and brief flame, and the horses throughout the column had to be kicked hard and reined in tight as they skittered to left and right with white and rolling eyes, ears pressed back, and every other man there crossed himself and worked his lips again in furious prayer, Attila only gazed in rapture into the forest and upwards into the chaos of the dark and angry heavens and prayed, Astur, my father… Lord of the Storm…
Then a fork of lightning hit Beric and Genseric’s carriage immediately behind them.
As is the unpredictable way with lightning, it left the main carriage untouched but burst the leather straps that supported it, and the entire unwieldy apparatus buckled in the middle and sank down upon its axles. Then the back axle broke with a terrific crack. The terrified horses whinnied and reared and tried to break free, but they were still yoked implacably to the shattered carriage. The coachman lashed them down again and they subsided into nervy silence.
Gradually the rest of the column ahead slowed and then stopped, and the two mounted guards who rode alongside Olympian’s carriage wheeled and turned back to inspect the damage. They quickly concluded that the broken car would have to be pushed off the road into the forest, and the two Vandal princes would have to pack into the carriage ahead.
At that moment, Attila looked round and saw that Olympian was sitting forward, curiously hunched, with an arrow’s shaft and fletching sticking out of his vast belly. The eunuch was clutching his flesh bunched up around the arrow, and muttering, ‘I’ve been shot!’ Then he looked up at the boy and said, ‘I’ve been quite appallingly shot!’
‘It does look like it,’ Attila agreed.
Much of the arrow was still visible, however, and the boy reckoned that only an inch or two, including the head, had gone into the eunuch’s belly. Given his bulk, that would almost certainly make it only a minor flesh wound. He spared the poor man a glance of very momentary pity, and then leant out again. To the side of the window, sure enough, was another arrow embedded in the gilded woodwork of the carriage wall. As he watched, more arrows arced silently out of the dark forest and the rain, like eerie messengers from another world. Evidently the rain had done little to dampen their unseen enemies’ bowstrings just yet. One arrow struck a horse at the top of its leg; another went through a trooper’s throat and he reeled forward on his horse, clutching its neck and gargling blood all over its rain-sodden mane.
‘We’re under attack!’ cried a young optio. ‘From the left! Second squadron, to me!’
The eight cavalrymen turned and began to force their way into the dense forest, hacking at the low, spindly pine branches with their swords.
Lucius came galloping back alongside the column and reined in Tugha Ban furiously, her front hooves slithering forwards in the yellow mud. He was apparently oblivious of the flying arrows.
‘Dismount, you fucking idiots!’ he roared. ‘Get off your horses and use your fucking legs. We’re under attack
